Sure, many issues around intellectual property are gray. But contributor Jo Ardalan has a disturbing story: what happens when a fundraising album gets pirated? Did illegal file sharing users know what they were doing — is there a need for a donation mechanism for these services — or is it really this bad? Apologies if this is old news – catching up during travel – but a question well worth considering. -Ed.

We all know piracy forces labels, artists and developers to incur a huge cost. Recently, however, illegal file-sharing cost a bundle for the fundraising efforts aimed to raise money for reconstructing parts of Italy after a recent and devastating April quake. Universal Music and Italian pop artists collaborated on a track entitled “Domani 21/4/09″ that sells digitally for 2 Euros and will later be sold in stores for 5 Euros. According to Variety, the track has been downloaded illegally 2 million times.

Caterina Caselli, who produced the track for free says that this project is (translated from Italian) “sort of ‘mission impossible’: in one project between eighty artists and musicians doing almost everything in one day. All have dealt with air travel at their own expense, technicians and porters have worked for free, as do the catering…Universal does not gain anything.”

Artists inovled are Jovanotti, Ligabue, Zucchero and Elisa and many others.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118003748.html?categoryid=19&cs=1
http://discomania2.myblog.it/archive/2009/05/09/domani-21-4-09-con-jovanotti-e-altri-60-artisti-serve-a-racc.html [Italian]

Propellerhead’s upcoming Record has attracted a lot of attention and discussion, but some of the forum chatter has centered on the new authorization scheme. Record will in fact use a hardware dongle as a key. Propellerhead obviously anticipated a response, as on their own site, they concede: “Wait – a USB device? You mean… a dongle? Are you insane?” But in the current description, and the teasers over the weekend, they also promised a “different” way of doing authorization – a promise that in the short term may have made people even more confused.

At the risk of causing a flame war, let’s at least look at exactly how the authorization works. Authorization is, of course, always annoying to paid users on some level, and I expect some of you will still be unhappy with the USB key approach. Looking at it on balance, there are some advantages in certain situations, when compared to software-only authorization, and disadvantages in others.

This is a preview only of a non-shipping product, based on information Propellerhead has shared and my own experience. It’s also not intended to be an opinion piece; I just want to look at the big picture in the hopes that the online discussions can be better-informed.

First, to clear up a misconception: the authorization does not slow down boot time. In fact, Record is one of the fastest-booting audio apps I’ve seen. (Note: any comment about performance is just speculative, as we don’t have a final build yet. But this is partly objective; remember, by not supporting plug-ins, Record doesn’t have to slog through your plug-in folder, something you can leave to other tools.)

The first time you load Record, you’ll see something like this if your USB key isn’t plugged in:

Much of the debate online about the record industry has devolved – with quite a lot of help from the misguided message of the US trade group, the RIAA – into a debate about piracy. It winds up being something dumb, like, “Piracy is evil!” “No, piracy is great!” Wow, this should be a really insightful discussion – I can’t wait!

Piracy is, pure and simple, “loss prevention.” People often laugh off the comparison between piracy and things like shoplifting. But I think that comparison isn’t made enough – because if it were made, and made fairly, the record industry might remember what it’s business actually is. It’s business is selling something. If that becomes secondary to preventing theft, they cease to be a real business. Whether you’re scared of piracy or think it’s harmless, you ought to be able to agree. This ignorance is a disease that has threatened at times to infect music software creators, too – and I think the same issues apply.

The counter-argument even from some RIAA critics is that record sales don’t matter to musicians, or that sales of recordings is doomed. Those are interesting arguments. They just don’t have actual facts to back them up. With musicians selling music direct and working out new means of distribution with labels, the former is silly. Sure, not all musicians rely on music sales – some of us rely on things like teaching guitar lessons or (ahem) writing about music technology. But many other artists do think about selling music. Digital tech means that for bands like Sound Tribe Sector 9, they can even tie this to lucrative live performance. (STS9 now earns lots of revenue by selling downloads of live performances to concertgoers. I’m sure others could follow; I just happen to talk to the STS9 guys and know this.)  And most importantly, with explosive growth in mobile music, online music downloads, streaming music, Internet radio, terrestrial digital radio, music communities, the recording as a business is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

Not that you’d know any of this listening to the RIAA, because the only issue they want to talk about is piracy – not the actual sales one would associate with an “industry.” So why is no one calling foul – not only because the RIAA pursues abusive legal intimidation, but because they seem unable to act in their own self interest as an industry? Isn’t that a little … odd?

The problem is, music recording is often treated differently from other businesses; we view it in a vacuum, without precedent or comparison.

Have a quick look at the RIAA’s website:

http://riaa.org/

Who’s sampling what? When is sampling stealing? Who’s stolen sampled samples, and was the sampling stolen stealing? Is anyone actually playing live? Does anyone know what the law is? Does anyone care?

Yes, it’s been a lively November so far for massive, complicated legal battles, PR battles, who-said-who-sampled-what battles, and general sampling messiness. Here’s a quick round-up for those of you who haven’t been able to keep up (understandably).

And we’re going to play a game. I’m going to start talking, and you can see at what point your head starts to spin and you need to go lie down.

Ready?

Here’s the executive summary:

• Justice steal samples and talk about it, because you can’t recognize them.
• US courts said long ago “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” to the dismay of even the RIAA.
• German courts, disagreeing with the US and with other German courts, say it don’t mean a thing if you can’t hum along.
• FL Studio turns “Faxing Berlin” Deadmau5 demo content into “Berlin” mostly-the-same demo content and a bunch of people start screaming obscenities at each other and most of us lose interest.
• Justice can’t keep their USB cables from falling out, may have to pirate samples of themselves.
• The Killers (or MTV, more to the point) plagiarize an entire stage.
• My head hurts already.

Eliot Van Buskirk has, as always, terrific music coverage for Wired. The story this time: how Metallica’s Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails-style Internet release, free of DRM, seems only to make people angry. It gives a glimpse into how the Internet release could evolve over time, outside the aura of joy in which the latter two bands are enveloped. I can make the story short, though:

• In many circles, Metallica is no longer cool or never was cool.
• Lawyer make people MAD. Angry. Smash. (Apparently in addition to going after 60,000 pages of fans on Napster, Metallica doesn’t even like fan-made buttons.)
• Metallica is not Radiohead or Trent Reznor. (Stop the presses!)
• Even if you’re not Radiohead or Trent Reznor, you probably want your fans on your side. Pitchforks and torches tend to be a bad sign.

Of course, some might see the doomsday scenario of Internet music releases, in which fans determine that all music should be free and you can’t make money on releases any more. Big bands give away their stuff for free, the independent artist dies, music isn’t made any more, etc., etc. But given glowing fans proclaiming that they’re “glad I could shell out 40 pounds for the discbox” of In Rainbows, that seems unlikely.

And that’s the fundamental nature of fans. They’re looking for ways to give you their money so you can give them something back. Lesson learned by Metallica: don’t piss them off.

Fans Rip Metallica a New One [Wired.com Listening Post; enjoy the Napster-era parody video]

Photo: massdistraction, via Flickr.